CW: grooming, exploitation
Hey everyone.
Recently there has been a serious situation that has been brought up about UTY. While we have acknowledged and taken actions for this in the past, I want to give one final statement to clarify things.
A former team member was accused of grooming among other highly inappropriate behavior from around 2017 - 2019.
In 2019, a few of us caught wind of similar behavior and swiftly looked into the situation to find proof. This was a separate instance presented much softer as the allegations recently brought up, an instance which we ultimately determined was untrue after investigating. While I did grill the person of interest for it and took it seriously, there was negligence on our end due to us being young teens and me focusing on the game too much instead of properly vetting people. I should’ve dug deeper, and I do take responsibility for that.
We did take action however, firing the individual soon after because we found the behavior bad enough to not allow continued work. They were completely off of the team in 2019.
Still, because nothing was seen as criminal or too severe at the time, we did loosely keep in contact and they were still credited in the full release (2023) as I felt everyone deserved their name properly displayed for the time and work they volunteered. A poor choice in hindsight, but I didn’t have all the information.
It wasn’t until about a half year later from launch (2024) when it was brought to our attention that the situation allegedly ran much deeper, but I thought it was the same stuff we looked into in 2019, so I gave that explanation and emphasized how we do not support or condone anything that happened. This response was accepted so I carried on.
Fast forward another year (2025), and a large public callout was made which took me by surprise. I won’t lie, it did frustrate me when it happened because it implicated all 20+ members of Team UTY as complicit in a large coverup/protection, which wasn’t true at all - but the callout was enough for us to see this as something much larger, fully cutting ties and removing their credit from the game. Way too late of course.
And then we come to the present.
Because of the Shayy situation, this was brought up again by one of the individuals from the previous callout. So, I decided to just talk to them one on one to try to clear the air. This didn’t go very well. Whether it was because of me not giving great explanations or the high tensions, not much was accomplished. I came with an open heart and truly wanted to get to the bottom of it but all I got were large jumps to conclusions, my words offensively twisted, and a door in my face. Even still, I do get their frustration.
To make some progress, a member of Team UTY opened a true investigation, reporting to and involving organizations such as The Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the FBI to get to the bottom of the allegations and rabbit hole that was a Discord server ran by actual adults (not our fired member) in 2017. I won’t go into details but several children were exploited there.
We wanted to do right by finding the truth to hopefully reach closure but suddenly, the person I DMd made a new callout, airing out all our private conversations and more or less libeling me to all their followers - just lighting a fire to the bridge we were attempting to build. They would not cooperate in the investigation, instead tarnishing my name and a friend’s name with a sea of bad faith words. Blatant lies were tossed out to make UTY look worse such as attributing whole character creations to the individual when their actual contributions were minimal (Martlet and Mooch were created by unrelated artists), and aging me up 5 years at the start of development to make me look more irresponsible. It came across as highly disingenuous, even if it came from a well intentioned place to expose wrongdoing.
I don’t like to be on the offensive, I think my history online speaks for that, but here I do feel the need to take a stand because I am not the awful things they paint me as and I take these crimes very seriously when there is evidence. There were a lot of conflicting stories going around - different perspectives - new developments - and also, I don’t feel it’s fair to be as targeted for the whole thing as some have targeted me, as I was not close or involved in any alleged crime and took steps to remove the individual. Maybe not always complete, full measures, but steps nonetheless. I never “protected a pretator” or covered anything up. Not only would that be reprehensible, there wouldn’t be anything to gain from doing that. Someone who was fired in 2019 and not my friend.
Where we are now with the damage done, I don’t really know what else I or the team was supposed to conceivably do to help. It just felt like the goalpost kept moving and moving - it’s not fair to any of us.
I do want to stress however, the situation being investigated is serious. There are victims of several alleged perpetrators and I do believe them. Please do not harass or attack any of them.
I don’t want to fully turn this into something about myself, but I felt I had to defend my integrity.
To summarize:
Despite defending myself, it’s true I didn’t handle this with the utmost grace over the years, and I am sorry for that. For what it’s worth, everything has been reported to the proper authorities as it should be - and I have been silent on the matter to not jeopardize that.
I do not condone sexual crime and I would never knowingly protect someone like that.
That is all.
- MSR
One of the victim’s GoFundMe
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-vivian-pay-for-medical-expenses?modal=donations&tab=all
Resources:
FBI National Threat Center Tip Line: +18553247257
The Center for Missing and Exploited Children
1-800-843-5678 - 1-800-THE-LOST
https://www.missingkids.org/home